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Monday, November 18, 2013

Pear OS 8 "Rocha" Review: Very very elegant!

I have been following Pear Linux/OS for quite sometime. In fact, in between, I used Pear OS 6, the LTS one, as my main production distro for quite sometime last year. Pear OS intrigues me primarily because of it's striking resemblance to Mac OS X and inherent simplicity of the controls. Pear OS 8, based on Ubuntu 13.04 or Ubuntu Raring Ringtail, is the latest release from their stable. Unfortunately this release comes a bit late with the Ubuntu Raring already 6+ months old and Ubuntu Saucy (the latest version) already released. So, my basic interest was how the latest release of Pear OS fare against the previous LTS release: Pear OS 6 with support till April 2017.

I did a live boot on both the laptops and then installed Pear OS 8. The primary reason for installing in a couple of laptops is that throughout 2012-13, I used Asus K54C for testing the Linux distros and record benchmark performance. However, now with a lot of improvement going on as far as drivers for dedicated graphic cards are concerned, I intend to use Asus K55VM for all purposes in 2014. Hence, in the transition phase I am using both the laptops.

Pear OS 8 ships with tweaked GNOME 3.6.3 and Linux kernel 3.8.0. Nautilus 3.4.2. I expected Pear to migrate to the more modern Nautilus fork Files; anyway, both are one of the best file managers in business.

Aesthetics
I must say that I am very impressed with Pear OS 8 interface. It is very simple, intuitive and functional. Unlike Pear Linux 6 & 7, the annoying animations are left out to go for a more sober and subtle effects. The default wallpaper is quite good and gels with the overall Mac-ish theme. The desktop interface looks very refined and aesthetically appealing to the eyes.

The dash is similar to GNOME and is activated on clicking the launcher. Regular Linux user will take a day or two to adjust to the Pear OS interface as the launcher is in the docky, rather than at the top panel. Unlike Unity dash, Pear dash doesn't have any filters and it may become a bit cumbersome when you install a whole lot of applications. Never-the-less, like GNOME dash, a search option is there to locate the preferred applications.

However, the theme option is still empty and hopefully by the time the Pear 9/10 is out, we'll get to see some aesthetically pleasing themes.

Further, somehow the hot corners didn't work for me in Pear OS 8. They worked for me in the previous two releases of Pear on the same laptop.

In overall, if you are looking for a Mac OS X look alike Linux, Pear OS is a tough competitor to Elementary OS. Simply put, the interface is very sophisticated and looks gorgeous enough to draw attention of on-lookers.

Applications
Pear OS basically provides very few applications pre-installed. It has been the case with all the releases that I have used. Anyway, it is kind of better for the users with stable internet connection to install their preferred packages instead of the OS developer choosing what they should be using. Below is a list of the limited applications that Pear OS provides:

There is no proper word or spreadsheet processing application and required to be installed from the Ubuntu repositories. I installed LibreOffice 4 and it worked well with Pear.

Internet section is the richest in Pear OS and comes with Firefox as the default browser. Multimedia codecs and Adobe flashplugin gets installed during the OS installation. I could watch my favorite YouTube movies without any issue post installation.

Installation
Installation is simple and similar to Ubuntu Raring. No surprises there and it is a step-by-step process which starts with selection of language, followed by keyboard type and language, location and time zone, hard drive where to install Pear and finally user ID creation.

Performance
I must say Pear OS 8 is very smooth to use. Doing away with the fancy effects have actually resulted in an improvement in performance and smoothness of use. At steady state, the 32-bit OS consumes about 1-10% CPU and 190 MB RAM with task manager running on Asus K54C. Under similar circumstances on the same laptop, Pear OS performed way better than other GNOME 3 distros that I have used in 2012-13.

Operating System

Size of ISO

Base

Desktop

Linux kernel

CPU Usage

RAM usage

Size of installation

Pear OS 8

1 GB

Ubuntu

Gnome 3.6.3

3.8.0

1-10%

190 MB

3.67 GB

Zorin OS 7

1.5 GB

Ubuntu

Gnome 3.6

3.8.0

1-10%

195 MB

8.60 GB

Antergos 2013.08.20

671 MB

Arch

GNOME 3.8.4

3.10.0

1-10%

207 MB

3.6 GB

Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS

693 MB

Ubuntu

Unity 5

3.5.0

1-10%

230 MB

Pear OS 6

862 MB

Ubuntu

Pear Aurora 1.0.5

3.2.0

1-5%

235 MB

ROSA 2012 Fresh Gnome

1.1 GB

Mandriva

Gnome 3.6.2

3.6.10

1-10%

235 MB

Linux Deepin 12.12.1

1.2 GB

Ubuntu

GNOME 3.8

3.8.0

1-10%

240 MB

4.0 GB

Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS

741 MB

Ubuntu

Unity 5.20.0

3.8.0

1-10%

250 MB

3.06 GB

Ubuntu GNOME 13.10

919 MB

Ubuntu

GNOME 3.8.4

3.11.0

1-10%

256 MB

3.37 GB

Elementary OS Beta 1

651 MB

Ubuntu

Pantheon

3.2.0

1-5%

270 MB

2.87 GB

LuninuX 12.10

1500 MB

Ubuntu

Gnome 3.6

3.5.0

1-5%

280 MB

Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS

730 MB

Ubuntu

Unity 5

3.2.0

1-10%

280 MB

Ubuntu 13.04 Gnome

1 GB

Ubuntu

Gnome 3.8

3.8.0

1-10%

280 MB

Zorin 6.4 Educational

2 GB

Ubuntu

GNOME 3.4.2

3.2.0

1-10%

285 MB

5.6 GB

Fedora 17 Gnome

677 MB

Fedora

Gnome 3.4.1

3.3.4

1-10%

296 MB

Fedora 19 GNOME

964 MB

Fedora

GNOME 3.8

3.9.8

1-10%

297 MB

3.28 GB

Zorin 6 Core

1.4 GB

Ubuntu

Gnome 3.4.1

3.2.0

1-10%

300 MB

Fedora 18 Gnome

932 MB

Fedora

Gnome 3.6.2

3.7.2

1-10%

310 MB

OpenSUSE 12.2 Gnome

704 MB

OpenSUSE

Gnome 3.4.2

3.4.6

1-10%

310 MB

Pear OS 7 (64 bit)

1.1 GB

Ubuntu

Gnome 3.6

3.8.5

1-5%

315 MB

Ubuntu 13.04

835 MB

Ubuntu

Unity 7

3.8.0

1-10%

320 MB

4.98 GB

Pinguy OS 12.04

1.8 GB

Ubuntu

Gnome 3.4.1

3.2.0

1-5%

325 MB

Hanthana Linux 19

4.4 GB

Fedora

GNOME 3.8.4

3.11.2

1-10%

335 MB

11.74 GB

Ubuntu 13.10

939 MB

Ubuntu

Unity 7.1.2

3.11.0

1-10%

360 MB

3.70 GB

Sabayon 13.08 GNOME

1.8 GB

Gentoo

GNOME 3.8.3

3.10.0

1-10%

363 MB

6.13 GB

Ubuntu 12.10

790 MB

Ubuntu

Unity 6

3.5.0

1-10%

412 MB

My Experience with Pear OS 8
Following are the good and not-so-good experiences that I had while using Pear OS for a week or so on both the laptops:

Best of Pear OS 8
Here I am highlighting the features of Pear OS 8 that I really liked during my usage:My Pear 6: As I highlighted in the section on Aesthetics, it is a handy little application to tweak Pear OS appearance. Good job by the developers!Clean My Pear: I like this application for the ability to clear cache and free up a lot of space. It acts like Janitor and provides flexibility of system wide clean up, only internet cache clean up and trash clean up, etc. It is a handy option for users unfamiliar with a great deal of technicalities.

Automatic Updater: The update manager is added to the start up and provides options to view the packages to be updated, update via synaptic, install update and finally, if you are in the middle of something and not really interested to update, quit update. It is simple and intuitive.

Pear Cloud: It is a virtual storage space similar to Ubuntu One and gives 2 GB space for free. It requires creation of login profile and is good to access files from any computer. However, if you already have a dropbox account, you may not be interested in Pear Cloud.

Pear OS Software Center: It is good to see Pear OS acknowledging it's roots and retaining the Ubuntu Software Center. The previous app center was too much Mac-ish for me and the present one is a more familiar interface.

Synaptic Package Manager: Another utility application and works faster than Ubuntu Software Center. It is the best package manager I have used. But, it may be a daunting initially for Linux novices to use Synaptic.

Installing Nvidia drivers in Pear OS 8
It is similar to Ubuntu Raring and involves the following steps:
Add Bumblebee ppa and install bumblebee with nvidia drivers from the terminalsudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stablesudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia primus linux-headers-generic

Reboot and run optirun ls -l from the terminal to check if it looks like the screenshot below. If you get the output as shown here then bumblebee is working and the laptop heat will come down drastically.

You can now selectively choose the programs for which you need to run nvidia.

Bugs that I noted
Pear OS 8 comes with a few bugs that I noted while using it.Issue with Root log in: On my first attempt I was unable to login as root and it won't accept any password. So, I went back to my user ID login and created a password for root login by running the following command at the terminal:
sudo passwd root
This would prompt to enter and re-enter the root password that I would like create. And it worked!Curious case of VLC player: In root login, I could see a VLC player but was not visible in the dash. I re-installed it again from my user ID login. Still, VLC won't show up. So, I started VLC from the terminal and pinned it on the docky. Thereby, I could actually run VLC player and play my desired media files.

Issue in accessing USB drives: Somehow, I was not able to transfer files to any USB drivers. They were all in FAT-32 format (works with all operating systems including Windows and Linux). I tried changing permissions from root login, ran chmod command as root, etc. etc. But, nothing worked. Even the shared folders in LAN were not accessible. Possibly a bug and normally it doesn't happen with me with any Fedora/Ubuntu/Debian spin.Pretty slow Musique: Musique 1.2.1 is the default music file player and it took ages to load my collection of about 2 GB music files. Other players that I have used are 100 times more faster than musique. However, on clicking a single file, it played quite well. Further, using the preset options in equalizer, I could modify the effects that I wanted. It is a versatile player no doubt but I need faster import of media files.

Irritating language download options in live boot: Every time I did a live boot of Pear OS 8, an irritating language pack download option would automatically start. I don't expect any download to start in live boot and manually I had to kill it. Possibly it can be done away with in live boot and kept for post installation to do things.

No option to select user wallpapers: With Pear OS 8, I was stuck with the system wallpapers only as there was no option to include any folder in the Select Background entry. It is a bug for sure and I hope the developers correct it as soon as possible as it seriously limit customization options for the users.

Pear OS 8 presents an unique combination of aesthetics and functionality. The present version is the best Pear OS I have used, if I discount the bugs that I discussed above. However, the users on Pear OS 6 may have little incentive to upgrade to Pear OS 8 as this edition has barely 3-4 months of support. So, they may be better off waiting for the Pear OS based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to release. Looking at the present improvements and refinement that I noted in this version, I can expect a great LTS release from Pear in the pipeline.

One thing here, I didn't experience similar bugs in Pear OS 6, except for the launcher breaking down occasionally. Was this release a bit rushed? Not sure.

Anyway, the users who are interested to try out Pear OS 8, please go ahead and experience Pear. It may not be exactly Mac but the closest Linux can offer to Mac OS X.

Pear OS 8 is available in both 32 and 64 bit versions and they can be downloaded from here.

29 comments:

Excellent review Arindam. I have a friend that's hesitating to install a Linux distro (he's using Virtual Box in Windows to test) and he really loves the Mac OS interface. Maybe your review will convince him to put his hard drive to a good use! Thanks for all your work.Best regards

I find the critique of Musique not totally fair. You are right it takes to darn long to import a big collection of music but once that has been done it gives you background information about the band the special album you're listening to and even the Lyrics very neat my favourite music player... and it shuts up when you close it ..... fantastique

Good review which summarize pretty well the OS experience. I feel that they should have wait a little bit longer to release the distro.They have some strange bugs which could have been ironed out easily and get the distro a more favourable acceptance. I have installed it and plan to keep it after installing a few programs. It's great and I have no issues. Btw, for your background pictures, that's strange that there is no folder options. However if you have your pictures in your home images folder, they can be select by clicking Pictures.

Hi arindam,just change the name of the image,the same of some you find in background pictures,then the images from background pictures put in trash,and the picture you want for desktop in desktop,exemple,image from background pictures called land.jpg,and the image you want to change called galaxy.jpg change for land.jpg,remove the first one and put the second one.

Hi arindam,just change the name of the image,the same of some you find in background pictures,then the images from background pictures put in trash,and the picture you want for desktop in desktop,exemple,image from background pictures called land.jpg,and the image you want to change called galaxy.jpg change for land.jpg,remove the first one and put the second one.

Initial bugs were there in Pear OS 8 of launcher menu not going beyond the 1st page. However, the problem has been resolved now and I could browse multiple pages in Pear OS 8. Here are the screenshots for the same.https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Famgys8c656clWhDSLMId9MTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink

another nice review and i like the way you refine your style and structure of your reviews with every new one you do.

Im not a fan of that Macish look but I have to admit PearOs really adds some welcome variety in the Desktopecosystem. I especially like PearOs very own tools like MyPear although they are very Macish. Maybe next version will seduce me to give it a trial on my hardware. I hope they will focus a bit more on polishing the rough edges with version 9 again like they did before.

Hi Michael,Even I had issues with vlc not showing in the menu. Easiest way out is to open terminal, type vlc and hit enter. Vlc player will open and will show up in the docky below. Right click on the vlc icon in the docky and select pin to the dock. That worked for me.

thank you for the review! This OS really strike me! Hot corners and usb drives are working fine on me as I just tested this now. Though I wonder if this have issue with freeze up during copying large files.

The vlc problem is not solved even in the latest update,I have been using smplayer as my default player even in windows so installed it and worked fine. Thank you Arindam for the blog, i visit here often to know about other linux distros. The review with facts gives good idea for choosing the right distro one need. Thank you.

Hi ArindamThanks for the review. I am sort of a newbie to linux though having used Ubuntu for a while, I was interested to install linux on my old laptop celeron M 1.2 with 1256 RAM presently running on XP. What would you recommend to me.

Given your laptop specs, I will recommend Manjaro XFCE or Openbox edition. Ubuntu will run a bit slow on your laptop. Manjaro is based on Arch Linux and is very user friendly and stable. Please try it out.